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Headlines: Cheltenham Festival and 'one in a million' birth

Headlines: Cheltenham Festival and 'one in a million' birth

BBC News16-03-2025

Here is our weekly roundup of stories from across local websites in the West of England.We have a daily round up as well. Make sure you look out for it on the website and the local section of the BBC News app.
What have been the big stories in the West this week?
Cheltenham Festival has been the talk of the week. A man who got tickets for him and his dad but went alone after his father died has been viewed thousands of times. And Cheltenham Borough Council posted about its safe space for women under 18 during race week.There is just an 'E' left to paint before the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood is complete, Bristol Live reports. Work was abandoned because of protests by residents.Wiltshire 999s has published an article about a man admitting to having sex with a Shetland pony in a Wiltshire stables, who will be sentenced in May.ITV West Country has covered a 'one in a million' birth in Somerset. Five lambs have been born from the same ewe at a farm in Shapwick.And in more animal news – kind of – a video of Bristol comedian Jayde Adams singing Chappell Roan's 'Pink Pony Club' in a Bristol accent has gone super viral.
Top five local stories for the BBC in the West
Something longer to read
Somerset Live has published an article about how shopping and hospitality has changed since Covid. To mark five years since the beginning of the pandemic, the website has done a lookback on what has changed.
Explore more with our daily roundups

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Edinburgh Festival Fringe street theatre shows under threat

The Herald Scotland

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Edinburgh Festival Fringe street theatre shows under threat

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The society was asked by the city council to take responsibility for the increasingly street performances in 1999 following the success of a move to close part of the Royal Mile to traffic during the Fringe. The society, which negotiates with the city council and the police on where performances should take place, works with officially registered street entertainers to allocate slots for performances the three-week festival. Most of the running costs of the street events were usually met by commercial sponsors, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland or Virgin Money, the most recent backer before the pandemic. However the only public funding in place for the street events this year is a £75,000 grant from the city council, the only direct funding it provides for the festival, which has been valued at more than £200 million to the economy and sells more than two million tickets every year. The Herald can reveal that the Fringe Society faces having to pay more than £40,000 back to the council following the introduction of a new charging regime for event organisers this year. The Scottish Government has helped meet the costs of putting on the street events in recent years but has yet to confirm any support for this year's festival, which gets underway in just seven weeks. A spokesperson for the society said: 'Street events have been an integral part of the Fringe landscape since the 1970s. They remain one of the largest international gatherings of street performers anywhere, they take place throughout the festival and are free for anyone to attend. 'We took on the operational running of street events at the request of the council in 1999. The delivery costs prior to Covid were generally funded by a single sponsor, which enabled us to cover the costs of staging and supporting the events. 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Anthea Turner shares rare insight into relationship with fiancé Mark Armstrong
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Anthea Turner shares rare insight into relationship with fiancé Mark Armstrong

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